


Prince of Purgatory

by Smallswritesstuff



Series: "Hey There, Soldier" [4]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Cowboy God except actually not really, Hurt/Comfort, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, M/M, Major comic flavors but you can still read it without that context
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:42:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27962471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smallswritesstuff/pseuds/Smallswritesstuff
Summary: After returning to the original Umbrella Academy timeline and learning a little too much about his powers, Klaus blacks out. He wakes up on the outskirts of a colorless old western town.Mid-to-late S3 hypothetical.
Relationships: Klaus Hargreeves/David "Dave" Katz
Series: "Hey There, Soldier" [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2016610
Comments: 12
Kudos: 55





	Prince of Purgatory

**Author's Note:**

> Loosely based on this shitpost I had: https://mychemicalxmen.tumblr.com/post/636406438450855936/mychemicalxmen-i-see-emo-cowboy-klaus-and-i-offer
> 
> This is not how I would arrange *that* sequence in canon. (I actually considered writing out the more plausible scene in screenplay formatting and everything. Still might? idfk.) But. Here’s something related. But also kinda extra. Anyway. Come get your whump, kids.
> 
> UPDATE: Unfortunately, the McElroy brothers have answered an advice question I've asked in reference to this series and nothing is real. https://youtu.be/g-6L9GJN7k0?t=1383

As soon as the Hargreeves return to the Umbrella Academy - the _real_ Umbrella Academy, where they’d been raised, in 2019 - Klaus immediately sets off for his room. 

He falls to the edge of the group and disappears into the hall. The others are too busy chattering about their relief at the victory over Perseus’s evil entourage and their truce with the Sparrow Academy and all of that. But Klaus can hardly call the feeling in his stomach relief.

He thinks he hears Diego calling after him. A bit of obligatory brotherly concern. Nothing too drastic. He grips at the sides of his cowboy hat and tugs them down in an unconscious effort to block out the sound. It’s getting harder to focus again. 

Before that final battle in the Sparrow’s city, Five had described something he saw Klaus do in an alternate timeline. In the “Battle of Dallas”, as they had come to call it. 

Klaus rounds the corner he barely saw coming, stumbling even though it’s his house. It’s _his_ wing, that’s _his_ brother’s room he’s passing by, and that’s _his_ bathtub down that doorway to the right. He wonders faintly if the blood ever came out of his bedroom rug.

Apparently, in a desperate last-ditch effort to save the world from nuclear obliteration, Alternate Klaus had conjured an entire army of the dead. An array of vicious, prideful, real Normandy-storming sons-of-bitches.

Klaus reaches his room and shuts the door behind him, leaning his forehead against the door as he tries to orient himself again.

He’d had as horrid a week as the rest of his siblings, stranded in a world so familiar with seven imposters in their previous places, without the real Ben, and suddenly sober once more. And when Perseus’s hordes came, he did exactly what Five asked. But it wasn’t just conjuring. It was control.

“Klaus, the hell’s wrong with you now?”

It’s Diego’s voice, somewhere down the hall, gradually coming closer. 

It had felt far too natural, following Five’s request. But sure enough, Klaus was able to assemble the troops and just… use them. Order them about, without speaking a single word. Just commanding through will and pulses of blue energy.

For so long he’d led a life ruled by these tortured souls. But in that battle, all he had to do was dig a little deeper, and he could rule over them. They shouldn’t have stared at him that way, so expectant and hollow. 

_He shouldn’t have been able to do that._

Now, still against the door, his balance isn’t coming back. He’s exhausted and lightheaded and needs to _do something_ with this sick feeling. He propels himself off the door and paces the center of the room. 

His anxiety folds into a wave of illogical anger, his face growing warm with it. _Fine_. If he’d gotten such a stellar power upgrade, he could conjure up Dear Old Daddy right here. See the look on his face. Tell him to eat shit in Hell. 

He shuts his eyes and focuses his energy. It trickles in and gradually grows, pounding through his veins. It’s a familiar sensation that he muscles through in his weakened state. _C’mon, Reggie. Come out, come out, wherever you are._

Suddenly, it short-circuits. A pitiful spark of blue falls from his palms to the floor as the wave stutters to a stop. 

“Shit,” Klaus hisses. He hasn’t burned his powers out in decades, since the more grueling training days at the Academy. Why the hell should he now?

He’s just getting woozier from the exertion, but he barely pays it any mind. He just finds his way to the wall beside his bed, leaning heavily onto it with a single hand.

What about that snide little girl on the bike? Surely, he’d find consolation in wringing some answers out of Her. She has plenty to answer for. If he shoves through hard enough, he could get a link to Her again. 

He’s panting as he starts the power thrumming through his arms once more. 

It fizzes out to an abrupt stop, his hands turning all pins-and-needles. 

Klaus groans out loud and slams his other fist against the wall. “Dammit!” 

“Klaus?” Diego knocks on the door. Klaus seizes up. “Hey, man, you good?”

He feels a darkness closing in. Fatigue is drowning him now. He pulls his hand down the side of his face, just to keep himself conscious.

His fingers catch on the chain around his neck. 

Dave. The only person he ever cared about conjuring before, the last time he was in this dusty old museum of a home. 

But seeing his Dave again always had some big cosmic cost attached that Klaus never seemed able to pay in full. Withdrawal. Saving Luther. Being confronted by his father. Three years of waiting. A marathon through a whole other timeline with a whole other war to fight. 

Klaus has paid up plenty. He’s _earned_ this shred of comfort, goddammit. 

He stands back, both hands to the wall, and makes one more push, stronger than the other two combined. It crackles like lightning from his fingertips. He thinks he sees the light overhead flicker through his tightly-shut eyelids. 

He fights through that oncoming darkness. He can’t just succumb to it. He needs this to work, so badly. _Any_ solace, for everything he’s been through. 

“Klaus!”

It’s Five, this time. Or Luther. Or Vanya? Does it matter? 

His head is throbbing. His chest is burning. But he can’t let go of the charge. 

Then, it happens all at once. 

The line of energy is cut, and his trembling legs slip out from under him. He’s somewhat aware that his head is hurtling towards the edge of his bedside table but is out like a light before he can feel the collision.

…

…

...

Klaus wakes up on his back in a colorless void. 

There’s nothing but white sand for miles and miles and miles. He slowly sits up, his back aching.

There’s _almost_ nothing, that is, except for the quiet old western village right on the horizon. It’s a collection of stores and inns and homes made from weathered wood and brick, centered around a single dirt road that stops abruptly and empties into the vast desert. 

A literal ghost town. 

When he comes to standing, he can feel his feet firm against the ground as if they’re taking root. He can hear the movement of the air. His every sense is heightened here. If only on a spiritual level, he feels more connected to this place than anywhere he’s ever been. Not even the Academy. Not even that barbershop-treehouse-nightmare he’d stumbled into while hardly a day sober. 

And he thinks that the countryside where he met the girl on the bike is made from the same stuff as this valley. Or it’s the same place, just fluid in its appearance and environment. Because without the physical limits of the living world, why couldn’t it be? 

Wherever he is, his soul is perfectly attuned to this desert, in a way he’s never felt before. It’s like anything is possible for him here, in this land of ruin, without color or time or future.

He hates it.

He doesn’t want to leave. He needs to go into town. It’s this instinct - the stubborn kind he’s learned to trust. 

But he hates how much this dreadful place feels like home.

Someone’s here. He swings around to see an old cowboy - boots, thick mustache, the works - atop a seemingly soulless steed, not five feet away from him. Klaus is certain this guy wasn’t anywhere in sight three seconds ago. 

“You really done it now, huh, Ouija Boy?” the cowboy chuckles, voice deep and rough as gravel. He hops off of his horse and lands against the sand with a grunt. 

Klaus doesn’t respond.

He thinks he intuitively understands the cowboy’s role. He’s a sheriff of wandering souls. A tobacco-spitting Charon in silver spurs. A cocky one, too. It must get awful boring, shepherding spirits onto the spectral plane, if he’s so eager to pick a fight with a passing visitor.

“She tells me She don’t like you too much,” he continues.

She. The brat on the bike.

“Well,” Klaus grumbles. “Aside from some overwhelming outliers in 1960’s San Francisco, can’t say many do.” He feels a smirk settling on his own face by reflex. On the inside, though, he still feels stone cold. “What?” He manages. “Is She pissed about that? Destiny’s Children?” 

“Oh, she don’t care about that,” the cowboy answers. “Frankly, I never know what’s up that little skirt of Hers. But I know I don’t feel too good ‘bout that black magic you’re wieldin’ on earth.”

Great minds alike. Klaus doesn’t either. He never has, except for that stint in Dallas when he was able to hold himself together as a guru. But he’s not going to waste his time unpacking all of that for this arrogant jackass and his creepy astral horse.

“I want to go into town,” he says instead, even and solidly.

“No-can-do, partner,” the cowboy drawls. He lazily pulls a revolver from his holster and inspects the load inside. “You ain’t stickin’ around here long.” He gives the cylinder a spin as he closes it up.

Klaus doesn’t budge. He could question, or quip again, or insult. Each option sits right at the tip of his tongue, but he can’t humor any of them in this state. He’s too tired for games.

“No, I want to go into town,” he repeats.

“I said you ain’t gettin’ into town,” the cowboy snaps. Then, a thought crosses his mind, his bushy eyebrows rising in intrigue. “Lessn’ you wanna draw for it.”

Klaus gets it. This bullet would blast him back to the living realm, back into the comfort of a normal-everyday blackout, something he’d once been fairly accustomed to. The cowboy doesn’t expect to lose this challenge. This is his turf. Klaus, therefore, fits the part of the cowardly stranger who must be put in his place.

Like hell he’s gonna play the coward again.

_He needs to go into town._

Klaus holds out his hand. The cowboy nods with a snicker. Somehow, he reaches into his holster and pulls out a second revolver.

“Ten paces, boy, hmm?” He says, placing it in Klaus’s hand.

Klaus glares at him. 

Then he turns and starts the walk. The cowboy does the same.

He can sense the scuff of the cowboy’s boots on the ground. He synchronizes their steps. 

**_One._ **

He fixes his eyes on the blank, unending white horizon.

**_Two._ **

He hears the cowboy’s spurs jingling, a taunting little rhythm.

**_Three._ **

He hears the jingle of his own dog tags. He feels them pressing against his chest in a soft sigh of the wind.

**_Four._ **

His spine is stiff. His shoulders set. He can’t remember the last time he’d felt so still. 

**_Five._ **

He remembers the battle cries of the ghostly army in bloody, tattered uniforms. 

**_Six._ **

He remembers the shouting in the trenches of the A Shau Valley.

**_Sev—_ **

Klaus doesn’t just hear the cowboy’s bullet crack out of the barrel. He _feels_ it cutting into the air.

He pivots faster than he can think and holds out his empty hand. 

The bullet freezes in mid-air, turning from a soft grey to an electric blue, its glow matching that of his palm.

He stares at it and takes a breath.

Of course this bastard would play dirty.

And of course Klaus has power here. Of course his heart beats to the song of this valley, and he has heightened control over its reality. He was born a mediator between the lands of the dead and the living. He’s an heir to the Underworld. And as much as it makes him sick to his stomach, he’s finally growing into his badge.

His gaze hardens when he looks to the cowboy, dumbfounded where he stands, gun arm still extended. 

“What in the hell...”

Klaus turns his palm and lets another wave of energy course through him, brightening the glow of the bullet. He strains to build up a charge of power, a hum ringing through the air.

And with a shove forward, Klaus sends it flying directly back the way it came, leaving a brilliant streak of multicolored light in its wake. It strikes the sheriff in the chest and blows him back fifty feet with a startled yell of agony. 

The cowboy doesn’t return. Maybe his form stays there, and maybe it evaporates from this place out of sheer annoyance. But Klaus is alone. 

He looks to the horse standing by his side. Its pearly eyes stare through him indifferently. 

He drops his gun into a holster that wasn’t on his hip a minute ago. He approaches the steed. And after brief hesitation, he climbs on. One foot, then the other.

The horse immediately starts off towards the town, as if directly commanded. Klaus leans forward and clings on, tugging it to a quicker pace.

The horse’s hooves pound against the dry ground like rolling thunder. Wind rips across his face and through his hair. He presses his hat to his head with one hand and grips white-knuckled to the reigns with the other. His heart hammers with each forward jolt. He blinks away the sting of sand in his eyes and keeps surging faster. The edge of town creeps closer and closer.

He crosses the city limit and yanks the reins back, pulling the horse up and to a stumbling stop. The street is dead silent. 

The saloon to his left is unextraordinary in every way, with basic trimming, no discernible signage, and all the windows boarded up. But the double doors are calling his name. Following the thudding in his chest, he steps off the horse and staggers up to the front step.

The doors blow open with a pulse of blue energy from his extended hands. The crackling illumination of HELLO and GOOD BYE is what first catches the attention of the congregation scattered inside - vague, lost souls from all across time and space, of all ages and kinds, slouched over their drinks in dull ritual as they wait for eternity. 

They see the intruder’s glow of power fade as he brings his hands down. His slim silhouette lingers in the open doorway, shoulders heaving from his ragged breathing. The dim gas lamp lighting catches his eyes underneath the brim of his hat, weary and darker than any mortal man’s ought to be.

A few whispers ripple through the crowd of spirits as he stands in the entrance, impossibly heavy, cemented to the wooden floor. 

He drags his focus to the bar, where a figure in a dark vest and flannel, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, is sliding off his stool.

It’s Dave. 

It’s a wonderstruck Dave, unbloodied and gentle, staring at the man at the front as if he were an angel in black - fallen from grace and rising again with vengeance. Gorgeous. Unearthly. Scarred. And so deeply cursed.

“Klaus?” He hazards.

Though his pulse is pounding, Klaus lacks the strength to speak. He can only bring himself to nod.

Dave’s expression immediately shifts. He hurries to meet him, charging straight through the pathway of tables without looking away. “Holy shit. Klaus!”

Klaus hauls himself forward a few steps. As soon as they meet, his arms drop over Dave’s shoulders and pull him into a close embrace.

“Oh my God,” Dave is still rambling, practically manic with it, holding him tighter still. “Klaus. God, I’ve missed you so much. I can’t believe it, I just thought— But I don't—”

He falters when he feels a shuttering breath against his chest.

The dam has broken at last. Klaus is trembling in his arms, finally collapsing from all of the mounting pressure. He can’t find it in himself to care about anything else but the feeling of Dave around him, holding him sturdily, keeping him from disintegrating completely.

“Hey,” Dave murmurs. He slowly rubs into his back. “Klaus, it’s okay.”

Klaus fights to breathe as a string of sobs shakes through his body. No. As far as he’s concerned, there’s nothing else on this entire plane. No saloon, no ghosts, no horse, no sheriff. No army of the damned from a kingdom they expect him to inherit. He buries his face in Dave’s shoulder, undoubtedly soaking his sleeve with tears. It wouldn’t be the first time. Dave hadn’t minded before. 

He’s still right there, his hand stopping those little circles and just pressing down securely. “It’s alright,” he mutters, ever-so-goddamn tenderly. 

This wasn’t the reunion Klaus was hoping for. It’s nowhere near any of the scenarios he’d run through in his head for the last three years. He would’ve been a mess in any case, drenched in sweat and restrained in the Academy attic or tripping over himself in a hardware store or in a number of other situations. But he didn’t imagine he’d be so weak. Such a pile of broken pieces.

He wants so badly to be able to speak. He whimpers out something to the tune of an apology. The words “I’m sorry” are just barely intelligible. 

“No, no, don’t be,” Dave answers quickly. It comes with a little laugh. It makes Klaus smile a bit too, just for half a beat, at how ridiculous it all is. “We’re okay, darlin’,” he says. “I love you. So much.”

Klaus nods, gasping for a steady breath. Dave doesn’t need to hear him say it back. He already knows. And that thought just makes Klaus all the more overwhelmed with adoration for him. 

So Klaus might be cursed. Haunted. Burdened with the sharpest pains of life on earth as well as the crushing weight of his power over the wandering dead. But he doesn’t think he’ll ever again regret the decision to flush the poison that kept the ghosts at bay. Not now that he’s finally back here, in his love’s arms.

“We’re okay,” Dave is still insisting, choking up with joy himself now.

Klaus has no idea how much longer he has in this realm before he wakes back up, and he has no idea where their story goes from here. All he can think, as he feels a kiss being pressed against his hair, is that he wouldn’t possibly dream of having a more beloved First Gentleman of the Underworld.

  
  



End file.
